Certain telephone calls require the services of an operator for completion. Although these services have evolved through the performance of human operators, and although they are still generally thought of in those terms, the technology has advanced to the point where it is now commonplace for operator services to be fully automated. Any one of the various kinds of calls that require operator services for completion can now be provided without human intervention. Among these are "alternate billing" calls, person-to-person calls, and calls from pay phones which are to be paid for in advance as "coin-paid" calls. With alternate billing, for a particular call, the charges for the call are arranged to be billed to an account for a telephone other than the one from which the call originates. Alternate billing calls include collect calls, calls for billing to a third party, and credit card calls.
Generally, a local exchange carrier (LEC) is responsible for providing operator services for intra-LATA calls carried within its network (within a "local access transport area" or LATA), and an interexchange carrier (IXC) is responsible for providing operator services for calls carried by its network. In the latter case, as with most other calls, operator service calls typically originate with a local exchange carrier and they are passed through by the LEC to the interexchange carrier's network. This occurs without the local exchange carrier involving itself in the provision of operator services, and it remains then for the IXC to make those services available if they are needed. In either case, whether the services are provided for a local call or for a long distance call, the call is typically routed, by the responsible carrier, from or within its network, to an operator services platform that is deployed for providing the needed services.
Since most calls, both long distance and intra-LATA, are received in the first instance by a local exchange carrier, it has been suggested that operator services for both kinds of calls can be provided by operator service platforms (e.g., operator service centers) of the local exchange carriers. One deterrent to such an arrangement is that special operator service trunks have been needed in order to route calls to these platforms. A solution for dealing with that, however, is disclosed in the application of Robert P. Florindi et al., identified above. Even with the solution offered by the disclosure of that application, however, it remains necessary for the LEC to first pass long distance calls in need of operator services to the interexchange carrier network, and for the IXC to then forward them to an operator service platform of the local exchange carrier that is engaged to provide the services.
Thus, notwithstanding the improvements that have been made, operating efficiencies would be expected if a local exchange carrier that initially receives calls could provide at least some of the operator services, as required, before passing the calls to an interexchange carrier, and if the processes and techniques used to service the long distance calls (e.g., inter-LATA) could be used by the LEC for providing the same kinds of services for its intra-LATA calls. For those services carried out in advance of moving a call to the IXC network, the operator services desirably would be transparent to the interexchange carrier and it would receive the call as it does any other call not requiring operator services. In other words, the call, in those cases, could be received and processed by the IXC essentially as a "plain old telephone service" (POTS) call, having already received operator service processing by the LEC. In that kind of arrangement, the LEC would necessarily be responsible for certain billing and record keeping aspects related to the call processing.
An objective of the present invention, therefore, is to provide a method and apparatus by which operator services can be furnished for both intra-LATA and inter-LATA calls, and by which at least some of the services can be performed by a local exchange carrier for its own, intra-LATA calls and for inter-LATA calls before they are passed to an interexchange carrier. In certain aspects, the invention is facilitated by the application of advanced intelligent network (AIN) operating principles and by utilizing an AIN architectural framework and signaling system.